First of all, I apologize for taking so long to post another
chapter: life happened to me and not in a good way. I've dealt with most of the
stuff, though, and should be able to update more often.

Thank you for all the wonderful reviews! It's much easier to write
when you have positive feedback.

I don't own Nasuverse which is a good thing: had I owned something
that awesome I wouldn't have bothered to do anything ever again.

I'd like to warn you in advance that the chronology will be a bit
different from the novel in the beginning and then will depart from it
completely as the differences in Shirou and the girls' characters affect the
story's development.

Fonts used:

"Speech."

Thoughts.

"Arias and other Mysteries."

"Higher beings speaking, overpowered Mysteries."

Let's hop right in.

First day, second night

Illyasviel von Einzbern was happy. One would undoubtedly wonder how
a weapon engineered for the War and destined to die even if she won could be
happy; how a Magus who had been forced to support the Berserker way without the
Grail; how an orphan abandoned by her parents could be happy. The answer was
simple: Illya was unstable at the best of times and insane – at the worst.

And she was aware of it too: a smart girl like her couldn't go and
ignore the fact that her mood swings were way beyond what could be considered
normal and her general outlook on life was warped quite a bit. Only the fact
that she did realize there was something wrong gave her hope: if Illya was conscious
of it, it couldn't be that bad.

And right now she actually had a good reason to be giddy: for the
first time in her life she was free! Her servants didn't follow her to the city
and there was no one to keep her company except for Berserker and her silent
companion would never disapprove of whatever she did or said, what with his
battle-addled scrambled brains and all.

After taking a look at the sights around Fuyuki Illya decided to pay
her family a visit: it was only polite when going to your sibling's town to
greet them before you killed them, after all.

She had very few illusions concerning her actual family: Einzberns
weren't kind but, then again, few Magi were. The fact that both her mother
years prior and she at present were allowed to roam the streets of Fuyuki more
or less freely didn't stem from some notion of generosity or, Root forbid,
compassion; rather, it was simply efficient use of resources. No matter how
powerful a Magus, members of her family wouldn't last more than five seconds
against a Servant – this was an accepted fact. In addition, the church frowned
upon 'unreasonable' amounts of outside help for the participants: for example, nobody
would allow them to bring a platoon of Dead Apostles for fighting, promising
the undead free roam of the city in case the participant won.

Even bringing her two personal servants and guards would be pushing
it if they ever left the castle to engage her opponents.

Lack of outside help didn't bother Illya, of course: Berserker was
the strongest. Heracles was overpowered beyond anything anyone could have expected
while preparing for the fights ahead and the girl's only concern was a selfish
one: to prolong the only time she could taste freedom and, by extension, her
remaining time in general. She knew she wasn't long for this world.

Which was why it was so infuriating to waste precious moments waiting
on the route her brother would necessarily follow on his way home. Tiny little
moments had always carried more weight than normal with the all-to-mortal girl,
whether they whizzed past her like bullets or crawled like a snail on downers. She
had been quite confident Shirou would hurry back home as soon as possible to
prepare for the fight but that turned out to be a miscalculation. Really, what
sort of an idiot even went to school when a war was about to start? Apparently,
this one.

Eventually Shirou showed up with the Matou heir, they said goodbye a
fair way before reaching Illya's hiding spot and her brother kept on walking.
Exhaling in relief and feeling butterflies in the stomach for the first time in
a very long time, Illya stepped out from behind a trash container and put on
what was one of her creepiest smiles. Even the Einzberns tended to remember
some urgent previous engagement when they saw her like this: eyes promising
death and suffering while her expression showed nothing but childishness and
happiness.

"You better summon it soon, Onii-san…"

Illya was quite proud of her playful, lilting voice: it added to the
general feeling of wrongness nicely, she thought.

The boy stopped and tilted his head in thought. To Illya's dismay,
he didn't seem particularly unnerved or bothered. Puzzled, if anything.

"Onii-san? Why do you call me 'nii-san'?"

"Hehehe…"

Illya was prepared to skip away, her job done, when Shirou
continued:

"Wouldn't I be your imouto, Illya-san?"

"Wha?.."

And just like that, the mood was spoiled. She had been rehearsing
this scene for months and that redheaded infuriating prick broke it! Now the
girl wanted to break something herself: she had half a mind to call Berserker
and end Shirou right then and there when the teen looked at his watch.

"Anyway, I have an hour or so. Want to grab some ice-cream?"

The look of incredulity on her face must have been extreme because
Shirou visibly cringed.

"Right, Einzbern. Frozen mountains and everything… maybe some spiced
wine instead? They probably won't want to sell you the stuff but a light
illusion… what? Your face looks strange. Are you in pain?"

"Neee… little brother? I think I will be killing you now…"

Shirou arched an eyebrow:

"Why?"

"You are strange, little brother… I don't know why Kiritsugu chose
you over me but this has to end now…"

The only reason she hadn't asked Berserker to tear the weirdo limb
from limb was that she wanted to see fear in those brown-steel eyes. Alas, it
was only consternation.

"But it doesn't make sense! If you kill me now, the Grail isn't
filled with energy! I don't understand revenge very well, I admit, but wouldn't
it be more humiliating to destroy me completely along with my Servant?"

Illy blinked.

"Are you saying that now isn't the best time to kill you because it won't
make me as happy as, say, tomorrow? Were you dropped on your head when you were
an infant, little brother?"

The boy rubbed his forehead in frustration:

"Why does everyone always ask that? How am I supposed to know? Anyway,
how about ice-cream and punch? And you try to kill me later?"

It dawned on Illya then with all the horror her tortured heart could
feel: the reason why Kiritsugu didn't come back for her wasn't that he cared
more about some adopted kid, it was because he needed to keep said kid out of
an asylum. An orphanage really wasn't an option for someone who was this…
strange. The worst part of it was that Shirou was right: now really was an
illogical time to kill him; it was much better to get both the satisfaction and
the payoff at one time. Plus, she kind of wanted to know what Japanese
ice-cream tasted like: Illya had read they had some really strange flavors like
wasabi. More than a little perturbed, she followed her unhinged brother.

###

Five minutes later they were sitting in a quiet little place,
snuggly tucked into a corner booth; she had the weird radish ice-cream and
Shirou opted for a vanilla one. Both had mulled wine in front of them: her
brother had expertly nudged a waiter with a short Mana burst right when they
were about to be denied alcohol. The girl realized something was off a few
seconds after bringing them the drinks, of course, but decided it was better to
pretend nothing was wrong.

Shirou used this chance to take a good long look at his estranged
sister. Illya looked like a weirdly dressed twelve-year-old girl from Europe
who hadn't been told that Fuyuki's climate didn't call for ridiculous fur hats
and outlandish heavy coats. Her skin was pearl-white as was the hair and her
eyes were red: from far away she could have been mistaken for an albino but up
close it was quite clear that the girl was something different: her skin wasn't
devoid of all pigmentation, just underexposed to sunlight.

She also seemed uncomfortable for some reason which made him feel
ill at ease in turn: after all, shouldn't she be more confident if she had been
preparing for this battle her whole life? What kind of monsters the rest of the
Masters must be to make his sister this nervous!

He decided to break the silence:

"So, how do you like Fuyuki's weather?"

"It's fine, I guess."

Illya fidgeted, barely touching her ice-cream. Shirou sighed:

"Look, I'm sure you'll be fine: the Einzberns must have prepared you
well. If anything, it's everyone else who should be worried."

He gave her what he believed to be his best reassuring smile.

"What in the name of the Root is wrong with you? Why aren't you
scared of me, Shirou?! Why do you act all infuriating and… and friendly-like?!"

It was lucky for them that the café was almost empty by that
point and all they got was a few annoyed stares from one couple whose date must
have been going extremely well before two brats decided to turn the atmosphere
sour.

Shirou chuckled and addressed the room at large in a strained voice:

"Sorry, me and my sister… we can be a bit loud at times. Won't
happen again, right, Illya?"

The girl nodded, her face red like a tomato, mumbling something that
sounded suspiciously like 'I'll kill them, kill them all' under her breath.

"Look, I don't get why you are getting angry. It's not like I chose
not to have any contact with you."

"But that's just the point! It's your fault that Papa never came
back!"

The girl looked to be on the verge of tears or maybe a violent
rampage. It was difficult to tell with her because panic always seemed to be
accompanied by rage in Illya's case.

"Troublesome… Look, let's just enjoy the ice-cream, okay."

The rest of the evening they ate in silence and this allowed his
sister to calm down a bit. Shirou decided it was a good first step.

Oh, he had considered telling Illya everything at once: both the
truth about Kiritsugu and his plans to keep her alive beyond the limited
half-homunculus lifespan. That had actually been the plan before he decided to
share it with the girls. Even Sakura voiced her reservations against dropping
all that on the girl he had never seen in his life and had every reason to
deceive because of the war.

Tohsaka was a bit more vocal and proceeded to chase Shirou around
the house with a baseball bat. Her sister found the scene hilarious.

They parted about an hour after their initial meeting: a very confused
and quite angry girl and similarly confused but quite happy guy.

###

Meeting Illya made Shirou move his schedule up a day: it was fairly
obvious that his elder sister already had a Servant, otherwise she wouldn't be
parading around the town with no guard.

His own peak of power was at two A.M. The Workshop was ready and all
that remained was the ritual itself.

Shirou stood next to the Circle in complete darkness, his eyes
closed.

"The one worthy of the Throne."

His Circuits flared pulling both at his Od and the Mana he had
stored in a crystal Tohsaka had gifted him. The pressure built up somewhere
deeper than his very sense of self and then found a release like an arrow being
pulled out of an agonizing wound; liquid force surged through his system and an
Avalon replica appeared, immediately getting fired into the middle of the
Circle. The pattern on the floor glowed a dull gold and started to hum quietly.

"Embodiment of ideals, protector of the unwilling."

Another fake struck the diameter of the Circle, intensifying both
the light and the sound. It was an ordinary Mystic code from the Clocktower
arsenal that was centuries old.

"Selfless ruler, selfish servant."

Each verse was punctuated by a new blade striking the circle between
lines and giving the array its power.

"Beside me you will banish the encroaching darkness.

Beside me you will smother the burning light.

With everything to give.

With nothing to take.

I call on you from beyond.

With two hearts and one ideal.

Let us find and fulfill our purpose.

Become my blade!"

Shirou was aware of the standard Servant summoning incantation but
the words of the Aria itself didn't matter very much: it was the Circle on the
ground, the Prana and his intent that did all the work. And the classical Aria
just didn't seem right to him.

By the end of the ritual he had burned through the crystal
completely and all his nerves were on fire, suffering from Prana overload. The
Circle itself was blindingly bright in the darkness, amber and gold fire
dancing on the lines. All the while, Avalon shone brighter and brighter, its
hum becoming an eerie, hypnotic choir. With no small amount of dismay Shirou
realized that another song was resonating inside him as the pieces of the
actual Noble Phantasm started to respond: bright spots appeared under his white
shirt and he felt vibrations in his chest.

Higher and higher they went: the light, so bright he couldn't see
anything anymore; the song, so loud he was sure he would go deaf; the
fluttering in his chest, so strong he feared it would soon start to rend his
flesh. Just when Shirou was collapsed on his knees from exhaustion there was an
explosion of pure unbridled power.

It surged from the design on the floor and filled the workshop with
an even more brilliant light, impossible as that might have seemed moments ago.
And then it rushed back to the center and everything was quiet.

His eyes watery and ears ringing, Shirou looked up. The full moon
came out from behind the windows and its calm blue light drifted through the
shed's only window. With golden afterimages surrounding her, before him stood a
beautiful golden-haired girl clad in full armor: all thick, heavy steel around
delicate features and blue cloth.

"I ask you this, are you my Master?"

Her voice was barely a whisper in the ocean of noise that still
filled his ears, yet he understood her perfectly. It could have been beautiful
but it was far too no-nonsense and business-like. The voice of someone who
devoted everything to their purpose.

"Yes."

As unconsciousness took him, Shirou whispered:

"The Once and Future Kind – a girl. What irony…"

###

Arturia Pendragon wasn't a proper Heroic Spirit: where they were
personifications of human myth, sometimes attached to a former mortal's soul,
King Arthur was an actual living legend plucked out of her time to fight for a
miracle capable of saving her war-ravaged homeland.

Because of her special status some Holy Grail rules applied to her
while others didn't. Her body couldn't go into Spirit form, yet she still
required Prana from her Master to function and was subject to the system when
it came to the level of her skills and abilities: while the Grail itself
handled most of the summoning, extra power poured into it helped the Spirit
gain a slight edge. Normally it would be nothing special: like some minor trait
of the Phantasm being a bit more powerful or perhaps a less-known part of the
Hero's legend manifesting in the form of some secondary artefact.

Because she wasn't a Heroic Spirit per se any extra energy used
during calling her to the War had no place left to go except into her attributes.
She felt the pull from her place on the hill: as always, she was forever
bleeding, forever dying for her homeland but then a second sun rose above the
horizon beckoning her onward, to her next attempt at fulfilling her duty.

What she didn't expect was the light blinding her during the
transition, burning into her muscles and veins, fortifying her flesh and
trickling into Excalibur. What she didn't expect was Avalon itself singing to
her, summoning its master with the power of nine lesser magical blades and the
power of one talented young Magus.

With some trepidation, she surrendered to the call.

The boy that summoned her and confirmed his status before fainting
from exhaustion was a puzzle. If he had that much ability, then why did he pour
it into swords and through them into a circle specifically designed to hold
them? Wouldn't using Prana directly make more sense? Then again, she wasn't a
Caster.

But puzzles could come later, first she needed to wait for her new
Master to regain consciousness.

###

"So you are a woman."

"Yes."

Shirou didn't know whether the reason for Saber's brevity had to do
with her not being one to waste words or in her currently going through
anything and everything he had pre-cooked at alarming speeds. Tohsaka had told
him Heroic Spirits didn't need food but could eat when they wanted. Then Saber
must have been a real glutton in her lifetime which didn't correlate with her
build at all. Anyway, that wasn't particularly important.

The more important fact was that it was apparently cemented by fate
he was doomed to be surrounded by powerful, difficult women and the more he
lived, the more of them he would have in his life.

At least Saber didn't seem like she would punch him at the slightest
provocation which he was extremely thankful for. Still, better confirm.

"Excuse, but I have to check. Are you prone to sudden bursts of
violence?"

"No."

Her eyebrow twitched.

"Do you have any sort of curses demanding you have regular sex with
men?"

"No."

She grimaced.

"Do you have a sense of humor?"

"No," she deadpanned.

They stared at each other for a few seconds.

"Was that a joke?"

"Maybe. Master, I have to ask you to refrain from frivolous
comments. You seem to be a competent Magus but distractions have proved to be
the undoing of better warriors in the past. We must stay focused."

Shirou decided to let the matter of finding more about Saber drop
for now: she didn't seem too big on sharing anything beyond her mission and he could
sympathize. Still, he couldn't help but feel that Kiritsugu had omitted purely
for fun the fact that King Arthur was actually a cute if somewhat rigid girl.

It was time to get to business.

"For now we should focus on outside parties seeking to warp this War
for their own benefit."

Saber tilted her head:

"Surely, destroying the other Masters will take priority."

"There are two major powers in this city seeking to use the upcoming
battle for their own gain. One of them is the current Overseer, Kotomine Kirei.
He is a sick, twisted man who thrives on messing with people's heads and
pushing them into morally impossible situations. I am sure he will try and
force us to choose between saving innocents and surviving some sort of fight.
He needs to be put down."

Saber silently nodded.

"The second one is a bit more predictable but may become an even
bigger problem long term. Matou Zouken is an ancient egoistical Magus who has
kept himself alive for centuries through unknown but undeniably corrupted Mysteries.
We have been able to examine some of his work and it appears that the man has
managed to make his familiars full-fledged containers for his soul. Other
Masters have an interest in disposing of him but the trick would be to do it
permanently."

"I don't see how a self-obsessed Magus concerns our mission."

Root, it was like talking to himself only even more gruff and
business-like.

"That self-obsessed Magus has prepared a second Lesser Grail. I'm
sure you can see how that can be a problem."

Now that got her attention:

"If the Heroic Spirits are split…"

"Honestly, nobody knows exactly what would happen. This particular
kind of cheating has never been tried before and this is saying something,
considering the fact that everybody seems to want to game the system whenever
they can. The main question is what would happen if one of the Lesser Grails
were killed. Would the energy go into the other Grail as it would with a Heroic
Spirit? Would it dissipate? Would it go into the Greater Grail itself screwing
up the whole process and making the wish-fulfillment impossible? There is no
way to know without trying and I'm not willing to risk it. We need to reduce
the number of unknown variables."

Saber nodded in contemplation and Shirou was happy to see she could
see sense.

"Good. Now tell me about your abilities."

###

Tohsaka would laugh if the situation hadn't been so screwed up in
the first place: the Holy Grail War had long since evolved from being a way to
fulfill man's wishes into something completely different. One of the very clear
signs of how warped the system had become was the fact that it still recognized
her right to become a Master even if her only wish was to dispose of the Grail
itself, save her sister and keep them all alive throughout the process. How the
hell that qualified as a legitimate wish she had no idea: it was quite possible
that the Grail simply felt the potential for destruction that trying to fulfill
her selfish desire would bring. After all, apparently chaos and destruction was
what it apparently existed for now.

Her reason for chuckling dryly wasn't that though, at least not at
the moment. It was the man she had summoned as a Servant. Shirou's own array
had given her some ideas and she emptied her father's heart-shaped gem into the
ritual, judging that a general power-up for her servant would be more useful
than lugging around an overpowered Mana-battery which she very likely wouldn't
be able to use strategically anyway. Shirou himself had added a couple minor
blade-based Mystic Codes Dietrich had given them as additional power sources
and combined with her own exceptional set of Circuits this amounted to a
practically insane amount of Prana – something she hoped to counteract the lack
of proper Catalyst with.

The ritual went without a hitch: both Sakura and Shirou helped her
double-check the entire thing including the most appropriate time. In a
blinding flash of light a man appeared in front of her, clad in a long red
cloak and a black vest, his hair silver and his eyes the colour of steel. He
looked vaguely familiar and it took her a whole of two seconds to place that
face and body.

"No…"

"I must ask you, are you my?.."

"No-no-no! Just shut up!"

"Master?.."

"I SAID SHUT UP!!! How is this even possible? There aren't supposed
to be any Heroes in the modern age! And you are from the future! What the
bloody fuck did you do, Shirou?! ARGH! As if beating sense into one of you
wasn't bad enough but two?"

The summoned man lost all of his cocky air in the span of five
seconds: in fact, he looked stunned.

"Tohsaka… You aren't supposed to…"

"I'm not supposed to?! You aren't supposed to be a Heroic Spirit!
You aren't supposed to pretend I don't know what you look like! You aren't
supposed to look as if all your plans have just gone up in the air because
there aren't supposed to be any plans in the first place!"

She went into Tohsaka's frustrated pose number two as Shirou called
it: facepalming with her left arm while supporting it with the right one.

"You will tell me how the hell this happened. If I think even for a
second you are lying or withholding information, Root help me, I will use a
Command Seal to ensure your honesty. Are we clear?"

"…Perfectly, Master."

###

Despite being convinced that the whole situation was a fuck-up,
Archer was quite happy they started this conversation as it kept him from
making some very dumb choices in the future. Because this reality's Shirou was
definitely not him: it was apparent that the Grail had pulled him from far
across the parallel planes. It wasn't unheard of, after all it was the theory
he himself had developed once upon with Tohsaka during their time at the Clock
tower: that both the Throne and the Counter Force actually transcended the
bounds of a single realm and none of the Heroic Spirits were simply human ideas
given form: they all had existed somewhere at one point or another in time and
space.

Which was another very strange thing about this summoning: he didn't
know how but Tohsaka had somehow managed to pump so much Mana into the ritual
that his memory was much less clouded than it should have been. Normally he had
trouble remembering: the Counter Force didn't give a damn about its
"employee's" personalities or mental health and when you got called upon by the
Spirit of Humanity you normally got little else beyond your combat skills and useful
experiences. The only reason he was very much cognizant during those summonings
was that, sadly, quite a large part of his original life was related to combat.

And when he was done the new violent experiences added to hundreds
of others. In his library of stories his own past was just a tiny shelf in a
corner of his mind and the rest was filled with blood, pain and futile attempts
to break the cycle by reliving the Grail War again, again, and again.

So it was quite natural that when he normally got summoned into said
War he could barely remember his own human life. Dead father, foolish dream,
precious people, self-sacrifice, alienating friends, more self-sacrifice,
ultimate self-sacrifice – that was pretty much it. He barely even remembered
the people and the fights until he saw them, for Root's sake! Only one face always
stood out in the memories: a man with black disheveled hair crying as he pulled
a badly burned boy out of the fire.

But this time everything was different: for some reason he clearly
remembered most of his original life, complete with faces, places, and most
dates. And his Reality Marble was filled to the brim with every tiny bladed
piece of junk he ever saw and made as opposed to only the more prominent weapons.

Overall, it was strange but not as strange as the picture of Shirou
that Tohsaka was kind enough to paint for him.

"So wait, the cretin actually restrains himself before throwing
himself in the way of bodily harm? What happened?"

"A lot, actually. Look, I don't have the time for this right now...
My Shirou… he isn't right in the head."

Archer snorted.

"No, I mean, really not right. Not right on the level of 'I do not
understand why society doesn't implement a gene registry for optimal breeding'
bad. On the level of 'my purpose is to find my purpose and no, circular logic
doesn't bother me' bad. On the level of 'I cut my finger, I have a paper due
tomorrow, I will stick a freaking healing sword into my hip to heal that cut as
I don't need to get for the next few hours' bad. And yes, all of those are
actual examples."

"Oh."

"Yes. 'Oh.' Apparently, Kiritsugu noticed it first but it was me,
Sakura and Dietrich who have picking up slack for years now."

"Dietrich?"

"What, you don't remember your adoptive father now, Archer? How hard
did you hit your ass on that sofa and why is your brain located there?"

Somehow, whenever Archer got summoned into the War he thrashed some
kind of furniture or other with his backside. It was just a universal constant.
Like gravity. Apparently even getting pulled into a reality this unlike his own
didn't preclude that.

"Oh? Now who is assuming they know everything? I've never had an
adoptive father; it was just me and Fuji-nee."

It was strange how easily his memories came, even a bit unsettling.
But it also helped him get the priorities right. Especially while he was ahead
of Tohsaka by the smallest margin in their verbal jab contest.

"Well, it looks like I don't have any real goal here but it's still
better than the alternative…"

"Which is?.."

He decided to be blunt.

"The Counter Force."

Tohsaka went white but thankfully stayed silent.

"Yeah. If your Shirou ever wants to make a deal with Gaia, Alaya or
anything ending in something that sounds like 'ya', you can do him a favor and
just kill him instead. Nobody wants to end up doing my job, trust me. Anyway,
What are our priorities? Since I remember pretty much everything, I might be
able to help you all survive this shitstorm."

"Zouken and Kotomine, obviously."

Oh, she thinks herself so clever.

"What about Gilgamesh?"

If color drained out of Tohsaka's face after his revelation that he
was basically a glorified antibody in the planet's system, then now she was the
color of bleached bone.

"HE IS STILL ALIVE?!"

"Ah, now there is the Tohsaka I loved."

"Wait, what? No, no, no, no! We are not going there! I will not have
romantic advances from the spirit of my lover who came back from a parallel
future! It is so insane my brain starts to melt just from contemplating the
possibility of contemplating the possibility. So. Just. No."

It was his turn to gape like an idiot.

"So, Gilgamesh. King of Heroes? Archer, are you with me?"

"Yes…"

"Why are you staring? Get yourself together, this changes
everything!"

And indeed it did.

###

Shirou had been worried that when he would finally meet Kotomine
Kirei he simply wouldn't be able to see the cruelty and insanity that others
accused the man of. After all, a lot of his own elegant, efficient solutions to
personal and societal problems were often met with incredulity if not
revulsion. He still didn't get why developing an artificial religion that
promoted productivity and peaceful coexistence and providing UN subsidies to
parents who raised their children in it wasn't viable. Sure, it would cause
some amount of outrage but wouldn't it be worth it to stop the never ending
bloodbath in the Middle East in ten or twenty years? Surely the citizens of
poor countries would take the opportunity to have more money in exchange for
some of their antiquated superstitions and the construct, made up of
appropriate values, would serve the role of support and justification they
seemed to so desperately need for their actions.

When he proposed such a course during one of their modern history
lessons was the only time he actually got yelled at by a teacher. Apparently
she was Christian and didn't appreciate his utilitarian approach at all.
Sometimes he simply didn't get people, so far that he would probably have been
called a sociopath had he not been a Magus first and foremost.

But Kotomine turned to be another breed entirely:

"…so you see, you can take refuge at the Church and simply wait
until the War is over but there have already been several dozen murders during
past week alone. Are you really one to stand back and watch people die,
Emiya-san?"

During the entire speech about being able to prevent murders
Kotomine had a kind of serene smile that only people who had no care in the
world had. That or pathological liars and psychopaths.

"I didn't say I wanted to forfeit."

"Emiya-san? But you said you didn't have a particular wish?"

"This battle will validate my existence."

The last phrase was delivered in an even emotionless voice. Hey, if
it worked for that one character in that one anime, why wouldn't it work for
him. He looked attentively at Kirei checking whether the man would suddenly
attempt to befriend him or attempt to convince him that life was more than
fighting and bloodshed?

"Emiya-san, even
if you don't want to forfeit, may I suggest resting here at the church for a
while? You appear to be mentally unstable after the summoning ritual."

Huh. Apparently it works only if the crazy one is the one to say it.

"No, thank you."

With that he left the priest behind with his meticulously
manufactured expressions. If Shirou hadn't been broken himself he probably
wouldn't have noticed but to him particularly the way the Overseer of the Holy
Grail War spoke volumes: the man had a purpose and it wasn't good.

There were three kinds of people he supposed: those who didn't need
a purpose, those who lacked it, and those who had it. The first group
encompassed most of the world's population. Even Tohsaka with her bull-headed
determination would probably choose to live a full life of a Magus instead of
dying immediately upon reaching the Root. It took him years but finally Shirou
understood: most people were governed by instincts and emotions and not by
rational pursuit of something that made them whole. They didn't need it because
they were more or less complete from the start, only needing some direction in
their lives to be happy.

Shirou himself was like a log adrift at sea: things like hunger or
sleep-deprivation bothered him on a barely mechanical level and subtler needs
common for others eluded him completely. Social acceptance, power over people,
knowledge… Well, maybe knowledge mattered a bit. Still, his life was dominated
by the desire to find something to truly apply himself to without any
reservation. The duty that his father had left him served as reasonable
stand-in for that ultimate wish, he supposed, but no more than that.

It was quite clear to him that Kotomine Kirei had found his
overriding purpose in life: he was far too focused, far too even. He didn't
seem happy, greedy, afraid, or bored. That kind of serenity implied either some
sort of spiritual enlightenment, which he severely doubted based on Kiritsugu's
description of the man, or singular path and iron discipline. And if his father
was to be believed, Kotomine had adopted 'testing of men' as his nature. The
irony wasn't lost on Shirou as that was the primary role of Lucifer according
to the very Church the priest was a member of.

They were walking a street, he in his school clothes and Saber in
her… formalwear. He didn't buy her explanation of there being something wrong
with the ritual as the reason for her permanent material state. It simply
didn't fit anything he had learned about the Holy Grail War: Servants were
Spirits and they were intangible. That was their default state and it was Mana
that granted them physical form. And yet, Saber got stuck and if he didn't know
better he'd think that he had summoned a human instead of a magical being
imprinted using the Throne of Heroes and brought into existence through the
Mystery that was the Greater Holy Grail.

And it really screwed his plans up too: he had relied on his Servant
being able to turn invisible and undetectable except by other War participants
when he had planned things. Now a lot of contingencies needed to be redone.

"Shirou. Someone's coming."

They were in the middle of a dark road in an area that had been hit
by gas leaks some days prior. He really didn't think those were real gas leaks,
though: that was quite possibly the most favorite excuse of the Association
when cleaning up after sloppy Magi.

But all of that was irrelevant as he sensed someone approaching.

"Haven't I been a good girl, brother? I have waited like you asked.
Now it's your turn to be a good boy and die."